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My name is Payton Chung, I live in Southwest Waterfront in Ward 6, and I am testifying with regard to the Clean Energy DC Omnibus Amendment Act of 2018. I am also a board member of the District of Columbia chapter of the Sierra Club, which has heartily applauded this bill, and an editor for Greater Greater Washington.

I’m a homeowner in a vulnerable location, just a few meters above the rising tides in the Anacostia and Potomac rivers. Some of my neighbors live in houses that are over 200 years old, which have made it this far, but whose survival in coming decades depends upon the passage of this bill and others like it.

The past few years of weird weather have given us a small taste of what a destabilized climate means for DC. So-called “business as usual” carbon emissions are a misnomer, as they will ensure that business will soon become very un-usual. Instead, businesses need the certainty of knowing that emissions will decline, and therefore that their business can indeed proceed as usual.

Passage of this bill will also cement DC’s position as a leader in green business development. We are the nation’s undisputed champion in the green and energy-efficient building sector, with more buildings certified under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) or Energy Star rating systems per capita than any other U.S. city. Green building professionals like myself (a LEED accredited professional in neighborhood development) have risen to the challenge set by DC’s high standards for building energy efficiency, and are capable of helping DC achieve the even more rigorous standards included in this bill. By expanding the SETF and Green Bank, this bill also ensures that all Washingtonians can implement these advanced technologies.

Passage of this bill will also boost expand DC’s already substantial “green dividend” – the economic gains we see from the fact that DC residents spend relatively little on fossil fuel imports, and therefore spend more with DC businesses. Since DC does not produce oil or gas, every dollar spent on these fuels vanishes from our local economy in a puff of smoke. Increasing energy efficiency for our buildings and transportation network directly lowers operating costs, saving businesses and residents money and keeping dollars within DC.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify in favor of the Clean Energy DC Omnibus Amendment Act.

Here’s one goofy idea: Burning a gallon of gas produces 19.64 pounds of carbon dioxide. One could thus levy “a motor fuels tax of $0.0133 per pound of carbon dioxide emissions that result from the fuel’s combustion,” which would result in a tax of:
– $0.235/gallon for gasoline with 10% ethanol (the usual mix around here)
– $0.261/gallon for pure gasoline (usually only sold as marine fuel around here)
– $0.298/gallon for pure diesel
– $0.276/gallon for pure biodiesel
Doing so would technically put a “carbon tax” on the books without appreciably raising existing tax rates, and providing a very small incentive for biofuels.

Of course, a recalculation is also an opportunity to harmonize rates with a neighboring jurisdiction… see below.

Maryland’s current rate is equivalent to $0.335 per gallon. (Yes, that’s $0.10 higher than DC’s.) Virginia’s current rate is $0.162.

How might DC gas station owners react to an increased gas tax?

You’ll have to ask them, but I was struck by this passage in a 2011 CityPaper profile (by Christine McDonald) of Joe Mamo, who owns nearly half of DC’s gas stations:

“We are really a real estate company,” he says. “We’re in it for the real estate.” Mamo considers the coming transition inevitable, given the high cost of D.C. real estate and predictions about “peak oil,” alternative fuels, and electric cars that might eventually make gas stations obsolete. “Long term, the real estate is where the value is,” he says.

Maximize energy efficiency across all sectors, including transportation, urban design, and land use. […]

Protect our air, water, land, and communities from pollution. Promote environmentally sensitive land use and urban design to minimize sprawl, provide a healthy environment for all, and minimize resource use.

Interestingly, the strategy that calls to “Protect and restore wildlands and waterways” continues that those wildlands serve a specific, objective, quantifiable purpose: “to provide large and connected habitats.” Not to protect the favorite views of favored humans, or to protect property values for landowners, but to rescue non-human species from the threat of habitat fragmentation.

…the Sierra Club urges planning and policies which stimulate…
“Infill” residential and commercial development on unused or under-used land within city boundaries…
Preservation and revitalization of urban neighborhoods, with residents protected from unreasonable economic and physical disruption…
Attractive, compact and efficient urban areas; with densities and mixtures of uses that encourage walking and transit use, and encourage more efficient use of private autos in balance with other transportation modes…
These development patterns and transit improvements would conserve energy, water, land and building materials while enhancing the pleasure and safety of urban life and reducing travel distances.

The Transportation Policy, adopted in 1994, supports policy and systems that “encourage land uses that minimize travel requirements; strengthen local communities, towns and urban centers.”

Reduce the need to drive passenger vehicles by shortening the distance between workplace, home, shopping and school, using “smart growth” planning and improved transportation options. Provide safe and appealing options for walking, bicycling and mass transit, including light rail passenger trains, which will reduce vehicle trips, emissions, fuel consumption, and the demand for new roads and pavement. Well-designed mixed-use communities create long-term reductions in energy usage. Appropriately designed public transportation systems are an essential component of a sustainable energy society… Congestion pricing should be applied, when feasible. Parking costs should be efficiently and conveniently unbundled to give consumers and employees more control over how they choose to spend their money.

If your local Sierra Club entity is proving unnecessarily obtuse in not living up to these policies, I’d suggest engaging by appealing to the Club’s strong sense of tradition, deference to higher authorities (encoded in the “One Club” policy), broader principles, and yes, policies. One specific idea: ask them to review the “Guidelines Governing Decisions on Schools, Hospitals or Other Projects Serving Economically Disadvantaged Communities.” Those require specific steps before Club entities decide to oppose or endorse a public facility, with a specific mention of “low-income housing project” (and thus many large-scale infill developments subject to inclusionary requirements). Notably, the Club must have a face-to-face listening session with those who will benefit, and write a 2-page assessment of the proposal and “any feasible environmentally superior alternatives” — which cannot include displacing housing to sprawling locations. Even where opposition by the Club may very well be warranted, the policy requires that it be thoughtful and considered, rather than knee-jerk.

Global warming poses a grave and imminent threat to not only humanity’s future, but to our shared past as well. In a recent issue of Preservation magazine, National Trust for Historic Preservation president Stephanie Meeks wrote that “as preservationists, it is incumbent on us to reckon with climate change bravely.” If left unchecked, the higher sea levels caused by global warming threaten the very existence of countless historic structures within the District of Columbia, including a great many of the surviving structures from its earliest days. For example, the original cornerstone of the District of Columbia (at Jones Point in Alexandria) was originally constructed on dry ground — but now sits below today’s sea level, hidden by an obtrusive concrete seawall and visible only through a protective cover. From the Jefferson Memorial to Randall School, Mayfair Mansions to Tingey House, global warming could very well obliterate scores of DC landmarks.

The sad thing about my statement today? Global warming will go pretty much unchecked under the present policy regime. Points-of-no-return are rapidly approaching for the terrestrial ice sheets of Greenland and West Antarctica; even with the boom in clean energy technology, there’s no stopping sea level from rising several meters or even many meters. Ten feet, twenty feet seem matter of course now; hundreds of feet is within the realm of possibility.

Is everything that we’re fighting about within our low-lying cities about to go for naught — are we just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic?

As Ian Urbina noted in the Times in November, property sales in flood-prone coastal areas are already slowing suspiciously. It’s impossible to know exactly why, but the rising incidence and cost of even “nuisance” flooding (as extensively reported by Ryan McNeill, Deborah J. Nelson and Duff Wilson from Reuters last year might well be causing people to think twice about purchasing in flood-prone areas.

What happens when the defenses start to run out? Will land suddenly, or gradually, become worthless? One fascinating “natural” experiment to watch is in Palm Springs, where the Desert Sun’s Rosalie Murphy wrote about the consequences of the expiring land leases that underlie half of that city. Condos are going begging for buyers, since expiring land leases can’t be encumbered with fresh mortgages — but commercial development often continues apace, since the mortgage terms are shorter.

I appreciate that the Trust is thinking more intersectionally, to the point of reframing its work as “reurbanism.” But given the forecasts, it’s tough for me not to see a lot of local skirmishes over waterfront sites as pretty pointless.

You can see the Capitol Dome from here. Photo by Eric Fidler, via Flickr

Yes, the McMillan Sand Filtration Site is one mile (from either end of the site) to the Red Line. It’s even 0.6 miles to the nearest express bus route (Georgia Avenue’s 79), and key network improvements are still in the planning stages. Yet from the point of view of someone who wants to reduce auto dependence (and the concomitant pollution, injury, and sprawl), what matters most is that MSFS is close to downtown, rather than close to Metro.

Transportation planning research has consistently shown that location relative to downtown and to other land uses is far more closely associated with the amount of driving than location relative to transit. Ewing and Cervero’s definitive 2010 meta-analysis (cited by 679 other scholarly articles) examined over 200 other studies, then combined the correlations found by 62 different studies:

Yes, it turns out that the number of miles that people drive is four-and-a-half times as closely correlated with the distance to downtown than with the distance to a transit stop. This strong relationship between driving and distance to downtown is borne out in local survey research by MWCOG/TPB. Note that whether an area has Metro access (like Largo or White Flint, vs. the Purple Line corridor) doesn’t actually seem to impact the number of drive-alone (SOV) trips.

Some suggest that development proposed for this site should instead go elsewhere. If the development is denied, those residents and employees and shoppers won’t just disappear, they’ll just go somewhere else. They won’t go to superior locations even closer to downtown and Metro (because those are so very plentiful!), but rather to far inferior locations. For instance, the life-sciences employers might choose an alternative location within our region that has already approved a similar mix of uses — such as Viva White Oak, Inova Fairfax, Great Seneca Science Corridor, and University Center in Ashburn, all of which are much further from both downtown and Metro.

This isn’t just the suburbs’ fault. Within the District, even more intensive development than what’s proposed at MSFS has already been given the go-ahead at locations such as the Armed Forces Retirement Home, Hecht Warehouse, and Buzzard Point. All of those sites are also inferior to MSFS from the standpoint of not just transit accessibility and distance to Metro Center, but also on all of the other factors shown to reduce VMT.

If the “Reasonable Development” types truly do care about reducing driving, I must have missed their years of caterwauling over the approval of all these other sites — not to mention the countless suburban developments that together pave over 100 acres of open space every single day in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. That’s why I give more credence to the people who do actually care about paving over the region, like the Piedmont Environmental Council — a/k/a the Coalition for Smarter Growth.

The results are definitively in: when it comes to cutting carbon pollution from new development, location is far and away the most important factor. Even bad infill development will easily beat even the best greenfield design in terms of avoiding car trips — the single most climate-damaging activity in most Americans’ daily lives.

Kaid Benfield illustrates the point by contrasting the VMT per capita within some of the best suburban and urban neighborhood designs of recent years. Grounding his analysis in research, he writes:

[L]ocation is by far the most significant indicator of how much driving typically takes place to and from a given neighborhood. This is because of something called “destination accessibility”: outlying locations have fewer jobs, shopping opportunities, schools and other typical trip destinations within easy reach than do more central locations, causing average driving distances to be longer. (It is also generally easier in more central locations to substitute transit and walking for what would otherwise be driving trips, but such “mode shifts” are statistically less significant to vehicle miles traveled than are driving trip distances.) As a result, carbon emissions from outlying locations, per person and per household, tend to be higher – typically a lot higher – than those from closer-in locations.

It takes a lot of effort to create new “connected, complete communities” from scratch, since a “complete community” depends upon a myriad of services. When the first household arrives in an incomplete “edge town” (like Kitts Creek, shown above), they may be able to walk to other houses and some services. New services won’t arrive until there’s sufficient population to support them — and in many cases, rely upon people living even further out. Contrast that with a new house within an existing “complete community,” which already has all of that community’s services at their doorstep, from day one.

I’ll note that mode shift is less statistically significant because, outside of a few urban cores where destinations are so close by that walking is enjoyable and driving a pain, driving accounts for a substantial majority of Americans’ trips. That makes development within those few urban cores that much more important, in the scheme of shifting Americans away from automobility.

Thus, the most effective land use tool that urban planners have to address the global warming crisis — and at minimal public cost, to boot — is to make infill development easier.

Applied on a global scale (or even at a citywide scale), the potential is vast: 2014’s New Climate Economy report estimated that “compact, transit-oriented cities” could keep 1.8 billion tons (CO2 equivalent) of global warming pollution out of the air annually by 2050. That’s equivalent to decarbonizing the entire US transportation sector, or the economies of Russia or India.

Many of the plants we call weeds originally evolved in tough conditions, where there is annual glaciation, periodic flooding, or severe fires – extreme events that leave exposed, bare earth. It’s in these devastated conditions that our weeds are at home. They germinate first and grow the fastest. And through these characteristics they have found important roles in re-establishing healthy ecosystems… Once the weeds are established, longer-lived plants, less adapted to disturbance, germinate and the process of succession begins. The process may end in a grasslands, woodlands or forest, depending on the soil and climate. Indeed, the weeds create the conditions of their own inevitable demise – inevitable unless of course the disturbance recurs.

The “weedy species” that so many bemoan, the token dry-cleaners and fast-food joints that sprout in brand-new buildings, are one key to building a retail market. Over time, better adapted shops will take root — and given enough stability, species will evolve into very specific ecological niches. These new species will both adapt to their environment, and also change the environment around them. The key is to give the habitat time to evolve by avoiding excessive disturbance — a condition ecologists call “disclimax.”

Cultivating biodiversity requires striking the right balance between stability and renewal. The goal should be less to conserve individuals than to maintain the health of overall communities, to not seek out stasis forever but to manage change for the long term.

Gradual change within human communities also helps to sustain and build linkages, according to a paper by sociologist Katherine King: “A gradual pace of redevelopment resulting in historical diversity of housing significantly predicts social relations.”